Let’s break this week down bullet-style, shall we?

• Monday: 25 minute run on the treadmill (a treadmill rant is coming in a later post)
• Wednesday: 25 minute run
• Friday: 40 minute, 3.5 mile workout with a 3 min run/1 min walk combo.  Check it:

All of my runs to this point have been pain free, but about an hour after yesterday’s run I felt something in my left leg. It doesn’t feel like a sore muscle exactly; it’s more like a pinch in a specific spot on the outside of my leg, just above the ankle.  I’m sure it’s nothing, though. Right? Right?!?! A classmate recently told me that she had planned to run a marathon a couple of years ago and had trained up to 14 miles when she suffered a stress fracture in her foot.  “If you feel any pain or anything starts to hurt, STOP,” she said. Good advice but it probably made me paranoid. I can’t walk across the parking lot to my car without thinking OMG I STEPPED ON THAT CURB WEIRD AND I FELT SOMETHING TWINGE AHH I’M RUINED. I’ll just take it easy for the next day or two to be on the safe side.

Sweet sassy molassy it’s cold outside!

I felt like I had bricks tied to my feet yesterday, which explains the practically-walking-pace of 11 min/mile (distance was 2.5 miles).  I felt fine during the day but as soon as I started running I could feel some tightness in my legs.  I’m not sure why; the only thing that was different this week was Wednesday’s run (2.3 miles) on a treadmill instead of the indoor track.

Nothing else of note this week.  Next week’s goal will be to hit the 3 mile mark. Additionally, I am going to start running and/or cross training during the weekends. The weekend break makes Monday’s runs a lot tougher than they should be.

Hello 2009! This Christmas there was a lot of running gifts under the tree. I unwrapped UnderArmour gear for hot and cold weather, shoes, gym bag, and perhaps most exciting: a Nike+ iPod sports kit. I love gadgets and the Nike+ kit is right up my alley. The sensor logs time, distance, pace, and calories burned, and iTunes then uploads the data to nikeplus.com.  The site was a little frustrating at first because the heavy Flash use did not play well with Firefox. I got it all smoothed out eventually, although I still spend a lot of time waiting on a loading screen. I love that it keeps a log of all my runs and provides graphs to view an overall progress or an individual run with distance and speed. Here’s what I’ve been doing since Christmas:

7 workouts for 12.75 miles and an average pace of 10’32” per mile.